an agreement signed with three associations to avoid food waste – Libération

2024-04-24 18:54:57

The Games Organizing Committee announced this Wednesday, April 24, the signing of an agreement aimed at redistributing unsold items from the 13 million meals and snacks served during the event. A device with still vague contours.

Infrastructure, furniture, food… The Games will be “sustainable” and “responsible”, insists Paris 2024. Objective: halve the carbon footprint of these Olympics compared to those of London in 2012. On the food aspect, while the he entire chain – from the supply of local products to the development of more plant-based menus – has been scrutinized, the Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Cojop) is now working on its last link: food waste. This Wednesday, April 24, Cojop as well as three associations – the Restos du Cœur, the French Federation of Food Banks and the Missing Chain – signed an agreement to redistribute unsold food during the sporting event.

“Second life”

In total, nearly 13 million meals and snacks should be served at all competition sites and in the different villages. If upstream, “the maximum will be done to avoid waste, both in terms of quantities and in terms of prevention work”, warns Paris 2024, the emphasis is placed on the “second life” of foodstuffs. A question from which Cojop cannot escape, food representing, on a Paris scale, “the second source sector of greenhouse gas emissions”, recalls Audrey Pulvar, deputy mayor of Paris, in charge of Agriculture and Sustainable Food.

On paper, the device is convincing. Every year in France, 10 million tonnes of food are thrown away. “Never has an event had such large quantities to manage. This is an unprecedented logistical challenge. This is why we want to be accompanied by those who will be best able to support us with good practices,” shares the president of Paris 2024, Tony Estanguet, recalling that “one in three French people say they are depriving themselves of food today. today”. Valérie de Margerie, president of the Missing Link, welcomes the future partnership which makes it possible to “place solidarity within the Games”. The position is shared by Restos du Cœur and the French Federation of Food Banks, which respectively support 1.3 million and 2.4 million people each year. They unanimously rejoice in such “solidarity”.

«Nettoyage social»

In fact, the timing makes some people cringe: “It is not the social work of the century, we are only entitled to the crumbs,” the Reverse of the Medal, collective, clarified to AFP of associations which denounce the harmful effects of the organization of the Olympic Games on the most precarious populations. The signing of the agreement for the recycling of unsold items comes one week to the day after the evacuation of the largest squat in France in Vitry-sur-Seine, to make way “clean” before the Olympics, and less than a month after the start of requisitions of Crous housing in the Paris region, where more than 2,000 students are housed. This pushed the collective to regularly denounce a “social cleansing” of Ile-de-France for the Olympics.

93 days before the Games, in detail, the contours of the system still seem very vague. Which foodstuffs will be affected? “Everything that an athlete will not have consumed and everything that will not have been sold in catering establishments: prepared meals, fruit, fresh produce, drinks. We will even be able to redistribute hot meals, we are working on it,” explains Laurence Champier of the food banks. How many volunteers will be mobilized? “Everything will depend on the quantities,” she continues, “but we will have to be attentive to the closures of day reception centers and associations in August, which is generally the month of vacation for volunteers. We will also have to pay attention to logistics and accredit everyone to have access to the often very secure sites. Last gray area: how to finance such a system? “We are not looking at a cost but at a benefit,” she says, adding however to wait for “the participation of patrons”.